The true extent of destruction

Modern civilization requires electricity to run. It's a given. Check out the (flash) images here about 2/3 of the way down the page of electrolumenescence as viewed from a satellite. The loss of that amount of light in that region involves hardship, by my reckoning, for almost 16 million Americans. Via witnit and others.

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Yesterday, I saw the MSM's talking heads (CNN, MSNBC) give a smackdown to the Mayor of New Orleans for suggesting the night before that "...certainly hundreds, perhaps thousands, have perished." Said smackdown due to an absence of evidence. Let's look at this a moment, shall we? Best estimates out of the Emergency Management folks at this point has about 20%, or 100,000 people in the city limits staying behind to weather the storm at home, many because they didn't have the means to support themselves. But that's just the city limits. Double the population of New Orleans exists below New Orleans and southeast down the peninsula, as well as across the lake towards the Mississippi border. Over a million and a half people. In Hammond, civil defense sources were quoted in yesterday's paper estimating that nearly 3/4's of the residents had remained in their homes. Area motels were all full with refugees from New Orleans. (Already, issues involving displacement of refugees from motels from rooms reserved by the American Red Cross for its disaster workers has cropped up as an issue in just this one small town. Imagine the scale of these displacements throughout the affected area!)

Let's you and I get real for a moment. The government has no interest in releasing the true extent of the death toll unless and until it is confirmed and that's just not going to happen anytime soon. But the very absence of signs of life from Grand Isle to New Orleans, as seen from the air, is reason enough to believe that more than hundreds have perished. Those Cajuns down on the bayou are a stubborn lot; lived through H. Camille and weren't going to be chased from their homes. Frankly, I suspect the 20% stay-at-home rate holds for the entire peninsula, not just the City.
Conservatively, I suspect a total of 5,000 in Louisiana alone from the storm and it's aftermath. Maybe more. Hopefully, I'm full of hot air and clueless. For once I'd like to be wrong in my pessimistic assessment.

Then there is Mississippi and Alabama. The governor of Alabama has admitted that the devastation extends much farther inland than originally anticipated; that it is unclear what has happened to inland residents -- no one has a handle on the numbers that fled vs. those who stayed. But he thinks the death toll will be thousands. Things are even worse in Mississippi. And the absence of infrastructure and local government is even more bothersome there, because they tend to vest the recordkeeping power in the county, except in cities. And Mississippi has a lot of cities.

This is just the beginning, folks. Remember the tsunami? It was days, weeks even, before their governments got a handle on the true extent of death and destruction. Given the situation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it will take that long here, too.

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So, give what you can to the real relief agencies. Primarily the American Red Cross, they haven't got a religious message to sell with their hand outs and they deal with disaster every day.

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It is becoming apparent that the policies and actions of the Bush administration coupled with the willingness of Congress to sell out their constituents for a bit more swag from the lobbyists has resulted in the wholesale gutting of the emergency management and response mechanism of the federal government as well as the absolute co-option of the state's militias to the so-called "national defense" as evinced in Iraq. And frankly, your local volunteer fire departments and ambulance squads just aren't funded nor equipped to cope with devastation of this magnitude. Department of Homeland Security? It's a boondoggle. Primarily concerned with intelligence and terrorism, it's organizational mindset has belittled disaster preparation, mitigation and response. It's beneath them to be concerned about such things when they can be checking people's shoes for C-4.

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Note to the Red States:

"But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."

6 Corinthians 9 KJV

I am truly sorry for your losses, but I am not surprised at the initial appearance of abandonment by President George Bush and his administration. They were only in it for the money... You folks voted for four more years of George Bush and this is the inevitable result of that decision, more's the pity.